Experiences trying to learn Japanese

Hello Everyone,

My 16-year old daugher, who is a 2nd year high school student told me there she has a classmate doing research about what it is like for foreingers, who come to Japan, trying to learn Japanese. I have been asked to visit her school and give a brief 15-20-minute talk about my experiences. I would like to hear from others, so I can share some other perspectives.

Patpaul

It's kind of a broad topic. If you could prompt with specific questions I could probably give better feedback.

The first time I went to Japan was almost 30 years ago now (ouch). I had been studying Japanese for a few months already, so I knew a little Japanese, but only a little. I remember I was at Umeda Station in Osaka and I needed to get somewhere...to a specific train perhaps? I didn't know the area at all, and of course my reading skills were almost nonexistent. I asked for directions to get to my destination, and people were very nice...but seemingly very thorough. All I could understand or remember was the first bit of information or two, so I asked for directions repeatedly and went as far as I could understand, only to ask again. I made it to wherever I was going, and I have the generosity and patience of the people of Osaka to thank. I've had a good impression of Osaka ever since.

I was much like Mikawa Onsen above. I landed in Japan with a little bit of Japanese knowledge, and went straight to the Japanese countryside where very few people spoke English. These were the pre-internet days. I carried around a small Japanese-English dictionary everywhere I went, and practiced writing kanji in my free time. I survived largely because of the generosity and kindness of other people. Kindness at the post office, the gas station, the photo-developing place, the train station, the taxi driver, etc...

A 10-word vocabulary quickly became a 20-word vocabulary, which then became a 100-word vocabulary. Sentences were made using nouns and verbs, sometimes in the correct order, sometimes not. Then, I gradually became aware of more complex sentence structures, verb conjugations, levels of politeness, etc... I got "conversational" (kind of) within a year. But I didn't get good until many years later - maybe 5 years. And by "good" I mean I could say a lot of things, but it wasn't always correct and wasn't always pretty. Took me 10 years before I realized how crappy my Japanese was, which allowed me to start getting better. 10 years was about the point at which I could buy a book (in Japanese) explaining the Japanese real estate tax system. But then, you get an event like a possible nuclear meltdown, which requires a highly specialized vocabulary, and you realize once again how much you don't know.

There was a comical novel about an expat in Japan called "Max Danger: The Adventures of an Expat in Tokyo" which was written by a foreigner with a keen eye for the absurdities of the privileged life of a foreign executive in Tokyo in the late 1980s. One of the lines in it stuck with me - it was an observation that the protagonist had used the Ginza subway station every day of his multi-year stay in Japan, but he had never learned how to write the kanji for "Ginza". For some reason I didn't want to be that guy, but it took me a while to learn how to write Ginza. I'm still not 100% confident that I can do it with the correct stroke order.

Also, I wanted to buy the Puffy album, because they were big at the time. I didn't have the requisite Japanese to ask properly, so I had to hum a few bars of this song at the store. Mildly embarrassing, but it got the point across.

My first trip off the Navy base was a learning experience , LOL. For some reason I had the idea all Japanese people also spoke & understood English. I was first amazed that Japanese people talking with each other always took time to say "hai" to me , so friendly I thought. Latter I learned how wrong I was about that.. My Japanese learning was mostly from workers at the bar I often went to. I was told on my first trip from Fukuoka to Tokyo that my Japanese was horrible and did I learn from a high school dropout. I then sent away for a college course on Japanese through the Navy that came with 2 big text books and a couple reels of 7 1/2 in tapes which helped me improve. I never bothered to learn any Kanji as all the signs in Fukuoka usually had English on them.